Getting the Customer Involved

Agile methods place a strong emphasis on customer feedback and interaction. Projects with involved customers have much higher chances of success than projects which lack customer interaction. So, how do Agile teams keep the customer involved.

When I mention this topic in my talks, I like to ask developers who collaborates with their customers. Nearly everyone always raises their hands with a great deal of enthusiasm and pride. I ask them to leave their hands up if they've spoken to their customers in the last week. With much shame, nearly every hand drops.

In a related post on InfoQ, Jenni (Dow) Jepsen suggested interesting ways to engage with the customer and create a successful product.

Thus, it is essential to realize that insufficient customer involvement is hazardous to the project. The key lies in identifying the pitfalls, keeping the customer involved and making sure that it is the right customer. Mike suggested that one should review a prospective customer with the CRACK mnemonic.

C – Collaborative – able to work with the team and communicate wellR – Representative – of their business segment, we want characteristic feedbackA – Accountable – to make decisions on the projectC – Committed – to the project, not frequently swapped for someone else who needs re-educationK – Knowledgeable – about their business area, able to answer questions and provide missing details

Be prepared to back off a bit from "agile" if necessary
by
Dave Nicolette

In my personal experience, I've found projects in which the real customer was directly and actively engaged have proceeded with fewer hiccups and fewer misunderstandings than others, and have delivered a good result, often early and with a strong focus on high-value features. That's just anecdotal, of course.

In most projects, it seems that it isn't practical for the customer to participate actively and continuously throughout the development process. In some cases, the recommendations given in the article can be helpful, especially when the organization is new to adaptive methods and people simply aren't sure what to do.

In other cases, no amount of wheedling or rewarding or what-have-you will change the fact that key stakeholders are not available to the project team most of the time. It may be an organizational structure issue or simply a question of the overall scope of the initiative; either way, it's beyond the scope of "agile" at the individual team level. In those cases, we have to do our best to come up with a fallback solution that provides the team with the best information we can get, with feedback at whatever rate is feasible, and just deal with it.

From my experience, poor or the wrong customer engagement is a sign of poor project governance. If you make sure you have the right business investors involved in the project, they will ensure that the proper customers are involved and that the project focuses on delivering the right value.

I am the ScrumMaster at big agency, which builds the website for a huge company. Having a customer that size let's people(in this case the ProductOwner) think inviting the customer is impossible. Today my boss called to tell me he talked to different employees in charge of projects we are working on, if they would be interested in joining our review. Guess what, every single one thought it would be a great idea! I am so happy about it, because I always tried to get the product owner ask for it. Now I can't wait for it and am looking for helpful advises. Thank you for summarizing the different ideas I am pretty sure it will help.